Ray LaHood defends President Obama's passenger-rail strategy

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood mounted a forceful defense Tuesday of President Barack Obama’s investment in the country’s long-neglected passenger rail service, making what may have been one of his final speeches as a member of the Cabinet.

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The next transportation secretary will also have to protect the vision of a president who wants Americans to one day be able to zip hundreds of miles by train in an hour or two, from one downtown to another. If it’s to be successful, the effort will need many more supportive presidents, transportation secretaries and congressional champions. But LaHood will be remembered for getting the ball rolling.

“This has been an extraordinary four years for high-speed rail. We’ve come a long way,” LaHood said to open his remarks to the High Speed Rail Summit in Washington’s Navy Yard neighborhood, just across the street from his office at the Department of Transportation. “When the economic recovery plan was passed by Congress within 30 days of the president being sworn in, there was $8 billion for high-speed rail. That’s $8 billion more than any other president.”

LaHood, who will retire once his yet-unnamed successor is confirmed by the Senate, didn’t have a new vision for faster trains to unveil on Tuesday.

That’s partly because of a conservative-dominated House that has little interest in new spending and is fighting to prevent more federal funding for high-speed rail’s beachhead in California. But it is also because many of the new rail routes and upgraded corridors that benefited from the $12 billion the Obama administration eventually parceled out for high-speed rail nationwide are not finished. The centerpiece of LaHood and Obama’s vision, a brand-new high-speed rail system in California that will eventually top 200 mph, hasn’t even broken ground yet.

It’s all a work in progress that will take energy, patience and a grass-roots effort to convince lawmakers of high-speed rail’s viability, LaHood said. “The people are so far ahead of most politicians on this,” he added.

The former Illinois congressman reminded the friendly audience of the arduous process that birthed the Transcontinental Railroad and the Interstate Highway System. These aren’t projects that came easily, quickly or cheaply.

But until they are up and running, every discussion of fast trains includes shadowboxing with critics, even when they aren’t in the audience. There are doubts over the cost, timeline and necessity of untold billions of dollars to realize the fantasy maps that rail boosters salivate over. And the familiar question comes from conservatives: Is this worth borrowing money from China to build?

“There’s no turning back. Do not be dissuaded by a few detractors. Do not be dissuaded by people without a transportation vision,” LaHood advised his audience. “The last group of transportation officials left us an interstate system. What we will leave to the next generation is high-speed rail.”

Speaking after LaHood, Federal Railroad Administrator Joe Szabo reminded attendees that the interstate system “started with eight lonely miles” in Kansas. Trains bounding across the California desert will start with about 130 lonely miles of new track in the Central Valley. And though ground will break on the project as soon as this year, it may be a decade or more before sleek, Euro-style trains clock the elusive 200-mph benchmark in the Golden State. In the interim, slower Amtrak trains will use the new track.